“I mean, a book with Jesus on the cover? That doesn’t always go over so well with my Biblical brethren,” says Cohen, content director for the Mother Nature Network, an environmental news site. “But, thankfully, they didn’t judge a book by its cover and opened it to discover all sorts of ways synagogues can improve themselves by studying churches.”

Cohen, who was formerly the founder and editor of American Jewish Life magazine and the website Jewsweek (both now defunct), calls Christians’ responses to his book the “greatest gift” of his book tour.

Photo courtesy of Benyamin Cohen

“Everywhere I go, Christians tell me how much they were inspired by my journey,” he says. “I feel such a special kinship for the Christian community that it really means the world to me that they have embraced this book.”

Cohen will be speaking about My Jesus Year on Sunday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Houston. The event is organized by the Jewish Book Council, which holds an American Idol like audition process every year for Jewish authors who want to go on book tour.

“They literally give you two minutes to make your pitch, and then they turn off the microphone,” says Cohen. “Besides going to Catholic confession, it’s one of the most nerve-racking experiences I’ve ever had. Thankfully, it was well worth the effort. I was invited to speak in more than a dozen cities, Houston being one of them.”

In a humorous author’s note, Cohen reveals that the stories in the book “actually happened,” though “some of the names, places, and other pieces of incriminating evidence have been changed to protect the innocent. And me.”

It’s clear from the beginning that Cohen’s book is going to be absolutely hilarious. “Here I am, a five-foot-two bespectacled Jewish kid, in a mosh pit of faith in a sea of 15,000 roused African Americans at the New Birth megachurch in Lithonia, Georgia,” he writes. “It’s Sunday, prime time for prayer, and I am just trying to blend in, hoping I won’t stand out too much.”

Of course, stand out Cohen does, and soon enough, the camera crew zeroes in on him (just as the archers find Saul in 1 Samuel 31:3), and Cohen sees his “Jewish face on Jesus’ JumboTron for all to see. Oh, God, forgive me.”

Cohen is a modern Orthodox Jew, who comes from a “clan of rabbinic rock stars.” So how does someone who grows up in an environment where “religion was served to us on a silver platter — whether we wanted it or not” end up on a Jesus tour?

As Cohen tells it, the winning combination of disgruntled “religious apathy” toward his Jewish faith and the “even greater vice” of envy of the worshipers at the church across the street led him to Jesus. “I felt lost, a traveler without a compass. I didn’t feel a connection to my own religion,” he writes. “What’s worse, the religion of others was tempting me, so close and yet so far away.”

But however much he rebelled in college — “I wanted to date a shiksa, a gentile girl, wrapped in bacon, but all I could do was order cable” — Cohen, even when he decided to explore Christianity, never considered converting.

“I went into this spiritual pilgrimage as a way to get more jazzed about my Judaism,” he says. “As I’ll discuss on Sunday night in Houston, converting was never really on the table.”

Cohen’s wife, Elizabeth, a “blond, blue-eyed daughter of a Methodist minister,” did convert to Orthodox Judaism, before meeting Cohen. She speaks from experience when she cautions Cohen that church can be just as boring as synagogue, but she approves his plan to go to church undercover, so long as he doesn’t expect her to join him and he promises not to tell the couple’s Jewish friends about his journey. “It may not be a ringing endorsement, but it’s the best I’m going to get from her.”

In hindsight, Cohen realizes his project was dangerous. “There is certainly an aspect of ‘Don’t try this at home, kids!’” he says. “I’m not sure I would tell people to do exactly what I did. Indeed, many Jews have thanked me for going on this journey and reporting back to them what I learned.”

But even if they don’t start touring houses of worship of other religions, people of faith should learn more about their neighbors, says Cohen.

“All too often, we walk around with blinders on, oblivious to the world around us. I think it would behoove us to become more understanding — and more tolerant — of all religions.”

It is hard to say whether My Jesus Year will have more to offer for Jews or Christians. Cohen is not only spewing PR-speak when he says Jews can use the book as a how-to guide for assimilating best church practices and using them to improve synagogue experience. Christians stand to benefit from seeing their own religious experience through fresh eyes, and Cohen is also a patient — if snarky — teacher of all things Orthodox Jewish.

The most important message of the book though is humility. It takes a lot of guts to go on the journey that Cohen undertakes. Rabbinic interpretations of Ecclesiastes 2:13 have noted that sometimes it takes exploring the darkness to better understand the light. This is not to say that church is darkness and synagogue is light, but the technique of immersing one’s self in ~x to better understand x is one that we can all learn from.